Expert Reviews has now carried out their own HDMI cable tests, but rather than focusing on an individual cable, they went to prove whether or not expensive cables make any difference over much cheaper cables. They used a PC as the source, a TrueHD capture card to capture the frames and compared MD5 hashes of source and captured frames.

The six major movie studios will be placing two unskippable ten second copyright warnings on all their new DVD and Blu-ray releases starting this week, which appear after pressing ‘Play’ at the main menu.

This pack will be available to Windows 8 Pro customers, priced at what Microsoft claims will be in-line with marginal costs. Windows 8 (home version) customers will need to purchase the Windows 8 Pro pack, which comes bundled with Media Center.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has proudly released their annual Theatrical Market Statistics Report for 2011, and members of the MPAA have released a statement bragging of world growth – up 3% internationally from 2010 – claiming the movie industry is still one of the most affordable forms of entertainment for consumers, and at the same time brandishing piracy for stealing their works and threatening to undo the industry.

Domestic theatergoers have largely turned their backs on 3D films, preferring those that don’t require ponying up a few extra dollars and wearing uncomfortable glasses. How exactly do theater owners deal with tapering ticket sales and 3D malaise? The only way they can: a price drop.

According to market researcher IHS, legally downloaded movies will outperform disc-based movies for the first time ever in 2012. The group believes online movies transactions will more than double this year, hitting 3.4 billion. Purchases of Blu-ray and DVD movies will fall for the second straight year to 2.4 billion, with a slow descent expected over the next five years.

Netflix has made it a goal to cater to streaming subscribers with content recommendations. But how does the company arrive at its conclusions? According to Todd Yellin, Netflix vice president of product innovation, it isn’t magic. And it isn’t perfect, either.

Anyone who’s accrued a decent number of friends on Facebook knows that short of blocking people it’s impossible to avoid a glut of awkward status updates and relationship changes. Meanwhile, Netflix wants to give its customers one more thing to share: their favorite movies and TV shows. The company is pushing for Congress to amend a 1980s pro-consumer privacy law that now, more than two decades later, unintentionally prevents subscribers from sharing the movies they’re watching over social networking services. Unfortunately, a new study paints the novel feature as relatively undesirable.

Theater chains rallied last year against premium video-on-demand — movies offered as high-priced home rentals mere weeks after debuting on the silver screen — arguing that the shortened time span would hurt their bottom lines. Amazon and Google have decided to ignore those criticisms, adding one unreleased film each to their respective online storefronts this month.

Motion Picture Association of America CEO Christopher Dodd has urged film professionals in India to band together with Hollywood to combat content theft. Speaking at the Ficci Frames convention in Mumbai this week, Dodd reiterated the trade group’s hardline stance against piracy and invited local representatives to help do their part.

Unless the US is going to throw out the law, then the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is not going to get its wish to become a monopoly; people were listening to what the MPAA had to say at the Association of American Publishers annual meeting this morning, and their one-sidedness, blatant propaganda, and profiteering agenda were made very transparent.

Amazon has boosted its streaming content library, adding several seasons and specials from myriad Discovery Communications channels this week. The agreement is the latest in the online retailer’s now year-long quest to compete with Netflix.

Warner Bros., Universal Pictures and Sony could soon score a powerful new ally for their nascent digital distribution platform UltraViolet. According to insider talk, Wal-Mart will pledge support to the electronic sell-through and disc-to-digital service next week.

Last fall, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings had a plan: to spin off the company’s successful by-mail DVD rental business into a new outfit called Qwikster. Basically, it was Netflix with a new (and silly) name. Prices would remain the same, and all subscribers had to do was bookmark a new site. As it turned out, it wasn’t a very good plan. Hastings pulled a 180 mere weeks after announcing it, killing the split and keeping Netflix, well, Netflix.

U.S. authorities have taken the next step in their effort to bring MegaUpload founder and accused copyright infringer Kim Dotcom to justice, filing an official extradition request with a New Zealand court this weekend.

Would you pay a small fee to turn your average HDTV into a smart TV? Always Innovating hopes so. The San Francisco company showed off its HDMI Dongle, which adds Android 4.0 support to non-connected televisions, at this week’s Mobile Web Congress in Barcelona, Spain.